George C. Zoley
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer & Founder, The GEO Group, Inc.
I think it wasmid-March, so it was late in the quarter. And we made our quarter results, but our revised guidance is indication that the occupancies did recede in late March and have stayed there and we’ve taken, I think, the prudent approach of forecasting the continuation until the situation changes.
Brian R. Evans
Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President, The GEO Group, Inc.
And Joe, if I could just add to what George mentioned, our normal expectation in Q3 would have been – or Q1 would have been that the numbers would have started to – our occupancy levels would have started to improve towards the end of the first quarter. Cyclically, the first quarter is usually lower occupancy levels, but instead of that improvement starting which is why you see the step up in our original guidance from Q1 to Q2 through the rest of the year and instead we’ve essentially held the numbers kind of where we are today offset by some improvement from payroll tax expense not being as high in the second, third and fourth quarter. So, that’s kind of the way things trended against what we would normally expect to occur.
Joe Gomes
Analyst, Noble Capital Markets, Inc.
Okay. And kind of afollow-up on that one. So, if you look at ICE average daily populations, at the end of the year, for the month of December, there are 42,000, last – I think it was last week or two weeks ago, they were at 30,000 as an average daily population for the week or roughly a 26% decline from the beginning of the year, and you guys are talking about an 8% decline in your revenue from ICE year-over-year, and I just wondered maybe if you could give a little color to that as to how you square that with such a sharp drop in the ICE population since the beginning of the year?
Brian R. Evans
Chief Financial Officer & Senior Vice President, The GEO Group, Inc.
Sure. So, first of all, as we mentioned in the call that 8% was a combination of ICE and U.S. Marshals. But as we mentioned and I think we mentioned in the call the majority of our contracts with – I have a fixed price component, a significant fixed price component to cover the high-level of fixed cost that it takes to operate a facility. So, even though the occupancy levels are lower, it’s not a proportionate impact to our revenues from the lower occupancy levels. So, that’s why those minimum occupancies or fixed price components of our contracts are so important. And most as George mentioned, most of our ICE contract have that, not quite as many of the U.S. Marshals, there’s a little more variability. And then, most of our state and our BOP contracts also have those fixed price arrangements. So, that’s why you see the impact more on ICE side just due to the volatility in those contracts and the U.S. Marshals.
Joe Gomes
Analyst, Noble Capital Markets, Inc.
Okay great. Thanks for the color on that. And then, lastly, if you could just talk a little bit your experience in previous economic downturns on overall prison population as we know the prison – overall prison populations have been declining over time here. What have you guys seen in the past when we’ve seen an economic downturn on the impact either positively or negatively on prison populations?
George C. Zoley
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer & Founder, The GEO Group, Inc.
Well, usually the question is about economic situations. Our company seems to do just as well in difficult economic situations. As far as state populations, our state occupancy is fairly static. Our facilities are medium security and up. So, we’re not losing prisoners. The ones that are being released at the federal level are not our prisoners. They’re in other types of facilities in the state facilities as well. They’re usually released from low security institutions.